$900 Million in Institute of Education Sciences Contracts Axed

“I think this is an effort to really stop evidence from driving any kind of policymaking and decision-making,” she added, saying the cuts attack “the very core of the research enterprise.”

Cancellation Confusion

The Education Department—which President Donald Trump has been proposing to shutter since before his re-election—has given no specifics on what contracts have been canceled or what studies, work or services those agreements were meant to provide. The department didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for a list of the canceled contracts, nor did the department provide an interview Tuesday.

The institute had an $807 million budget for fiscal year 2024, a sliver of the Education Department’s $79.1 billion budget.

In an emailed response to written questions, a department spokesperson pointed to a post on X by the Elon Musk–led Department of Government Efficiency saying the Education Department terminated $881 million in contracts Monday.

“Per the DOGE X account announcement, 89 IES contracts worth nearly $900m were canceled yesterday,” the department spokesperson wrote. He said the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the College Scorecard and College Navigator “were not impacted in any contract cancellations.” (The NAEP is a widely respected national K-12 test, and the College Scorecard and College Navigator are online data sources the public can use to find basic facts about higher education institutions, such as enrollment and graduation rates, and compare them.)

What was canceled, then? The department hasn’t said. The 26-word DOGE post on X says one contractor received $1.5 million “to ‘observe mailing and clerical operations’ at a mail center.” But it says nothing of the purpose of the remaining $879.5 million worth of other canceled contracts.

A joint statement from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics claims that more IES contracts were canceled than were mentioned in the DOGE post: about 170, “including those that NCES holds for the collection and reporting of education statistics.”

Felice Levine, executive director of AERA, said the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study was canceled. The report is required by Congress and conducted every four years. Levine described it as the “backbone” for two other longitudinal studies.

NCES’s most important role for higher education is collecting data from colleges and universities via the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). That data, which includes demographics, financial aid and more, feeds into the College Scorecard and College Navigator. A department official said IPEDS wasn’t affected by the cuts.

Past NCES Officials Weigh In

Mark Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, led the IES from 2018 to 2024 and served as commissioner of the NCES during the George W. Bush administration.

The NCES, he said, primarily supervises contracts, and after the cuts Monday, he estimates that about half of staff at the center “have nothing to do.” He said on a podcast Tuesday that what happened Monday was “difficult to swallow” and “came out of nowhere.”

But Schneider, who has advocated for moving IES to other federal agencies if President Trump shuts down the department, sees the cuts as a chance to update the department’s data systems and surveys so they are cheaper and more efficient. Schneider said at IES, there’s “a strong bias toward the status quo,” but he thinks it’s time to “rethink the game.”

“The fundamental questions are, what is the data we need and how do we build a data system that gets us the data we need in a modern way?” he said. “I hope the leadership team grabs the opportunity to … rebuild and modernize.”

He acknowledged that neither DOGE nor the department has indicated that their goal is to modernize the systems as officials tout the cuts as budget-saving measures.

Thomas Weko, a research professor at George Washington University who was the associate commissioner for postsecondary, adult and career education at NCES from 2007 to 2012, said contractors have been fundamental to the NCES’s work. While he noted NCES has had critics, he worried about the future of the center and IES more broadly.

“IES was an important funder of higher education research, an important standard-setter for higher education research in the United States, and it was viewed globally as a center of excellence and leadership,” Weko said. “There will be less education research in the future than there is today.”

Several higher education associations also raised alarm about the cuts in statements Tuesday. The Institute for College Access and Success said that without strong research and data on institutional performance and student outcomes, “Americans will be in the dark.”

Institute for Higher Education Policy president Mamie Voight said the cuts will “cause long-term scarring on our nation’s postsecondary system.”

Voight added that the cuts, which she called “irresponsible,” will stop policymakers from using data to steward taxpayer resources efficiently.

“These actions shift our country away from evidence-based policy in favor of uninformed guesswork,” she said. “Our country and our students deserve better.”